How Do They Know

Try listening with your heart this time. His tiny trotters gallop in dreams. He shuffles in his bed, the one he has dragged ever closer to his beloved blow heater. How does Reginald P. Piglet (P is for Perfect)—Reggie, for short— know this will have us in raptures? For nothing delights quite like a sleeping piglet.

When nature calls, he makes a beeline for his self-declared toilet area, relieving himself with the urgency only one who has held on too long could understand. How does Reggie now know to give us his ten-second warning, trusting we will ferry him outside to the grass? Pigs, after all, are among the cleanest animals alive.

And then there is mealtime. Something Reggie elevates to an art form. His take on it is a delicious blend of Brett Whiteley meets Pablo Picasso. His every bite paints a truth we should have known all along, and that is, pigs are not gluttonous or greedy, but connoisseurs of food. They savour each portion, guarding it as preciously as gold. And who could blame them? After all, how would you feel if someone were to steal your treasure?

A wry smile comes across our faces as we imagine an older version of Reggie, mouth brimming with carrots, apples and pumpkin, head held victoriously high, trotting off joyfully to his patch to slowly devour his feast.

If you still believe that pigs are greedy, perhaps your only insight has been gleaned from those hapless souls confined on factory farms. The ones forced to compete for restricted rations designed for weight gain but not fulfillment. In a place where they are denied the joy of space, choice and freedom.

How do they know that rubbing their precious pink snout hard against anything, including one’s leg, releases the same endorphins as suckling from their dear mummas?

Reggie knows all this and more. Which may surprise some, for he was only ten days old when he came into our care. Falling from the clutches of an industry that would have claimed him at around three months old, he instead fell gently into kindness. He was found roadside in a small country town, the only clues to his ordeal were the few faint scratches across his fuzzy pink body.

Reggie’s life will now be one of sanctuary. No dinner plate will ever claim him. Instead, only vast open spaces, mud-filled wallows, the joyous company of his kin, golden soft straw to nestle into and soil to upturn.

But most of all, how do they know this is how their lives should be—when so many of us, the self-declared intelligent species, do not?